Seedless' Wandering Reggae Earns Sublime Praise

Growing up in Orange, Casey Sullivan was heavily influenced by two bands: Sublime, a group he claims to listen to almost every day, and the Beatles. When an Austin-based promoter asked if his band Seedless were interested in sharing the stage with Sublime With Rome, he says, the group jumped at the opportunity, even though they at first thought they were being put on.

"Any time you have a chance to be on a lineup with those guys, you have to take it," he says. "But it sounded too good to be true."

Despite not being on tour at the time, the group played one warm-up show in Arizona before zipping to Texas, then making the 28-hour drive back to Orange County. The whirlwind journey may sound glamorous to outsiders, but the roots for the show were planted years before.

Formed in 2006, Seedless' current status took a while to cultivate. Originally called Lost In Cali, the quintet adopted their current name based not on their love for seedless fruits, but rather because they felt it was an accurate depiction of their sound.

"We weren't feeling our first name and didn't like saying it," Sullivan explains. "Our music doesn't really have a certain style to it. And since it cuts across all genres, we thought it's seedless, since it doesn't stem from any seed of music. Seedless seemed like a good basis of what we wanted to call it."

The band's early days saw Sullivan and drummer Shay Pino jamming before they met Grant, a bassist whose band had broken up. As a trio, they started playing shows in Newport Beach in front of friends; it was through a friend that they found rhythm guitarist Joe Bakhos. A few shows later, at a bar in Anaheim, they encountered Matt Liufau, who excitedly told them how much he enjoyed their reggae-rock sound and inquired about joining the budding group.